Chapter Twenty-Eight

“I’m sorry to see you again under these circumstances, Mrs. Wick.” Furyk nodded to the chair in front of her but she either ignored him or was too surprised by his appearance to pick up on the gesture.

Merrill looked down, embarrassed and suddenly very aware of her surroundings, her orange outfit and County sandals, and why she was here. Embarrassed because except for the family attorney, this man was the first visitor she’d had since Carl’s death.

“It’s okay, Mrs. Wick. Go ahead and have a seat.” He didn’t go around the table to pull out the chair. The one-way mirror on the wall to his left gave a deputy, probably the woman who’d brought Wick in, a clear view of the room. California law was a little hazy on the point of listening in to visitors’ conversations with prisoners but there was no confusion about physical contact. The only reason the guard wasn’t in the room was probably because Prole had said it was okay. Merrill didn’t look up but pulled back the chair. The squeal of metal against concrete startled her. Sitting, she leaned her elbows on the table and hung her head over them, hair obscuring her face. Furyk sat and waited a moment until she looked up and pushed her hair behind her ears.

“Are you here to interview me, Officer? My attorney says I’m not supposed to talk to anyone. I’m not supposed to say anything about that night. I’m sorry.” She gave him a wan smile, sincere and weak. “I don’t want to be rude, not to you since you were so nice.” She remembered clearly the sympathetic officer who’d come to the Wick home that evening and who’d asked a lot of gentle, slightly shaded, difficult questions. She’d answered them all honestly, but something in the way he had looked at her, had paused before leaving and not said anything for a moment, made her comfortable. Made her feel a little safer. She looked at him now and felt the same way. He was a few years older, a little more worn out than that night, but he looked just as strong – maybe stronger.

“That’s okay, Mrs. Wick, I’m not here to do that. I’m not with the department anymore.” He could read the sequence of thoughts passing through her mind – surprise that he wasn’t a cop any more and then confusion about why he was there. He let it sit for a few seconds while he finished a mental evaluation of the woman in front of him. She seemed to be holding up pretty well, not breaking down or panicked. Either that had happened earlier or was down the road. The main thing he saw was a mild confusion – not disorientation from shock or being a fish so far out of water it might have been the moon they were on, but a lack of focus. No surprise, since she’d either just killed her husband or hadn’t but was being accused. A scratch around her left eye and some reddening on her neck told him she was learning jail wasn’t a slumber party. He’d say something to Prole.

“Then…then, why are you here?” It was a simple question and he didn’t really have an answer. “You were very, well, you were…very kind…that evening. I – ” She ran out of words and just smiled instead. She felt lost and reverted to an attempt at small talk: “So, what are you doing now?” The incongruity of the innocuous question resounded off the walls.

Furyk smiled quickly and instinctively. “I run a sandwich shop.” Merrill nodded as though they were at a cocktail party and he’d just told her he worked on Wall Street. “But I do a few things on the side.” She continued to nod, just as lost as she’d been when she’d walked in the room.

“Mrs. Wick, did you kill your husband?” Her eyes widened and the cocktail party was gone. “I need to know, if I’m going to help.” She didn’t ask the obvious question, about how an ex-cop with a temper and kind eye who made Hoagies for a living could help her out of the hell that was closing in on her, burning her skin and her lungs with the threat of a future in a cell. She looked down again, shoulders suddenly hunched, and the hair fell from behind her ears again. Furyk could only see the crown of her head and he waited. A drop fell to the table, and then another tear next to it, and they pooled together. But then no more. Merrill looked up, hair clinging to the moisture on her face, and caught his gaze. She was still slumped, looking beaten and lost, but the confusion in her eyes was gone.

“No. No, I don’t think I did.”